Distinctive Custom Travel and Small Group Trips to Asia and the Pacific since 1987

May 4, 2009

A Walk in Calcutta

A New York Times article by Somini Sengupta.

“On a rainy day in the late 17th century, an enterprising agent of the British East India Company named Job Charnock sailed along the Hooghly River, a tributary of the Ganges that flows from high in the Himalayas into the Bay of Bengal, and pitched a tent on its swampy banks. The company bought three riverside villages. Soon they would become a port — flowing with opium, muslin and jute — and then, as the capital of British India until 1912, draw conquerors, dreamers and hungry folk from all over the world.”